Reported / Citable
Background
In the early hours of April 10, 2023, Aundra Dawayne Elbert Taylor stopped at a Fort Worth convenience store around 2:00 a.m. Inside, he encountered Marques Parker, who asked Taylor whether he was “5K” — a reference to a gang-affiliated identity Taylor had boasted about in a music video. Taylor claimed Parker’s hand was positioned in a backpack in a way that suggested he was gripping a gun (a gun was later found in the backpack), and that Parker made a statement implying he intended to shoot Taylor. Taylor immediately displayed his own firearm.
When Michael Sansom entered the store, tapped Parker on the shoulder, and stood next to him, Taylor drew no distinction between Parker and Sansom. Upon the entry of a third individual whom Taylor feared, Taylor opened fire, shooting both Parker and Sansom in the face. Both died. Taylor explained that he shot Sansom because Sansom was standing next to Parker and that association made Taylor fear him. Sansom had spoken no words to Taylor, displayed no weapon, made no threatening gestures, and video footage showed his hands were visible and non-threatening at the moment he was shot. Taylor also fired multiple shots at the back of the fleeing third party, who survived with a hand wound.
A Tarrant County jury acquitted Taylor of capital murder — which required the intentional killing of both Parker and Sansom in the same criminal transaction — but convicted him of the lesser-included offense of murder for the death of Sansom. The jury also rejected Taylor’s claim that he acted under sudden passion. The trial court sentenced Taylor to life imprisonment in accordance with the jury’s punishment verdict. Taylor appealed, arguing the State failed to disprove his self-defense claim beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Court’s Holding
The Second Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Writing for the panel, Justice Bassel held that the jury acted rationally and well within its province as factfinder when it rejected Taylor’s self-defense justification for the killing of Sansom. Applying the Jackson v. Virginia sufficiency standard, the court viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and concluded that a rational trier of fact could have found the elements of murder beyond a reasonable doubt and found against Taylor on the self-defense issue beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court emphasized that the State’s burden on self-defense is one of persuasion — proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt — not a burden requiring the production of affirmative rebuttal evidence. The record amply supported the jury’s rejection of Taylor’s claim: Sansom was unarmed, silent, and retreating when shot; his only “offense” was standing near Parker after greeting him; Taylor admitted he was not threatened by Sansom at the moment he pulled the trigger; and Taylor simultaneously fired on a fleeing third party. The court concluded the jury was entitled to find that Sansom’s mere proximity to Parker did not constitute a reasonable basis to believe deadly force was immediately necessary to protect Taylor against Sansom’s use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force.
The court also noted in a pointed footnote that Taylor’s appellate brief was “unhelpful to say the least,” faulting counsel for omitting record references, presenting selective quotations that mischaracterized the record, and citing authority — the most recent of which was over thirty years old — that had long been overruled, including an attempt to invoke the rejected factual-sufficiency standard from Clewis v. State.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant’s bare belief that a nearby person posed a threat — based solely on that person’s association with a primary aggressor, without any threatening words, gestures, or display of a weapon — does not compel a jury to accept a self-defense justification for killing that person.
- The State’s burden to disprove self-defense is a burden of persuasion, not a burden of production; the State need not produce independent rebuttal evidence if the record as a whole rationally supports rejecting the defense.
- A jury may reject even uncontradicted defensive testimony so long as the rejection is rational in light of the totality of the evidence and is not contradicted by indisputable objective facts — here, video footage and Taylor’s own admissions supplied that objective grounding.
- Appellate counsel risk credibility with the court by citing overruled precedent (such as the Clewis factual-sufficiency standard) and presenting selective record quotations that omit contrary evidence.
Why It Matters
This decision illustrates the narrow reach of Texas’s self-defense statute when a defendant invokes guilt-by-association as a basis for using deadly force against an unarmed bystander. The court’s analysis makes clear that a “reasonable belief” under Penal Code § 9.32 requires more than a speculative inference that someone might be aligned with a perceived threat; proximity and association alone cannot substitute for an objectively reasonable apprehension of imminent deadly force from that specific individual.
The opinion also serves as a reminder of the deference appellate courts give to jury verdicts in self-defense cases. Where the jury’s split verdict — acquitting on capital murder while convicting on the murder of one victim — signals a nuanced credibility determination, the appellate court will not disturb that judgment absent an irrational basis. Defense attorneys handling cases involving multi-victim shootings should recognize that a jury may accept a self-defense theory as to one victim while simultaneously rejecting it as to another who presented no independent threat.